A collection of accessible, but sometimes oversimplified, self-help articles.
A public health professional collects her articles about easing stress and enjoying life more by practicing gratitude and other strategies.
Khorrami offers advice on personal growth in a book that gathers 68 of her brief articles from sites like the Huffington Post and Psychology Today. She writes that regularly practicing gratitude promotes optimism, strengthens relationships, and increases motivation as it helps to protect against depression and curb anxiety. As evidence, she cites research showing that being grateful increases dopamine and serotonin levels, creating a sense of contentment. To make the science accessible, she simplifies key findings, breaking her articles into bite-sized sections and highlighting major points in headers. She also describes simple ways to practice gratitude. Her suggestions include appreciating enjoyable aspects of a day, saying thank you more often, complimenting a stranger, and sharing uplifting social media posts. Some tips focus on the Covid-19 pandemic, and others go beyond simply expressing gratitude: They involve letting go of insecurities, achieving goals, bolstering confidence, and building emotional strength. Other suggestions home in on strategies that can help with work, relationships, or healing after a difficult time. Khorrami also celebrates the global mental health movement spearheaded by celebrities like Michelle Obama, Prince Harry, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. She ends with a section called “All Good Things,” which promotes kindness, humility, and giving back. Some readers may see parts of the book as oversimplified or even Pollyannaish, including its idea that they can find “silver linings” in the Covid-19 pandemic, such as opportunities for more sleep, personal growth, or building resilience. Or they may find the by-your-bootstraps approach to problem-solving naïve given the entrenched prejudices or legal barriers that hold back some groups. Overall, however, this book is well designed and easy to use. The articles have a conversational tone and don’t need to be read in chronological order. That user-friendly approach means that even readers who disagree with parts of this book may be able to jump in at any point and find a useful tip or two.
A collection of accessible, but sometimes oversimplified, self-help articles.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-000-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mascot Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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